Recommendations of the Editorial team
There is loud laughter in the fully occupied event hall of the privately run photo cultural center Fotografiska in the former “Tacheles” building.
Corbijn and Grönemeyer: A conversation about friendship and trust
The moderated chat between the 70-year-old Dutch photographer Anton Corbijn and the also 70-year-old musician Herbert Grönemeyer is full of humor and irony. At one point, the VfL Bochum fan, who is often photographed by Corbijn, even slips into Dutch.
The anecdote about the legendary polar bear on the beach video for Grönemeyer’s mega-success “Mensch” is covered, as is the photographer’s apprenticeship years in London in the 1980s, which were still characterized by squats. The concept for the “Mensch” clip was created based on a track draft that came as a “work in progress” without text – apparently enough inspiration for an icon of the music television that still existed at the time.
A dialogue arose about friendship, creative closeness and the special role of trust in artistic collaboration. Grönemeyer impressively described how his friend and former London neighbor does not “depict” people, but rather gives them space to become visible. This calm and restraint also characterizes Corbijn himself: a quiet observer whose images have enormous emotional power.
Five decades of music, film and image history
The exhibition route then opened, presenting itself not as a mere retrospective, but as a journey through five decades of the down-to-earth photographer’s music, film and image history.
Corbijn says he found the camera out of shyness. Growing up as the son of a priest on a Dutch island, music became a retreat for him at an early age. The camera became a tool to connect with people. According to Corbijn, the desire to take photographs was stronger than any provincial inferiority complex.
The grainy black and white of his photographs does not seem nostalgic or over-stylized, but rather raw and, from today’s perspective, timeless. The exhibition brings together around 150 works – from Depeche Mode to U2 to Tom Waits, Nina Hagen, Grönemeyer and Einstreichen Neuhäusern. Many of these images have long been part of the collective memory of pop culture.
Particularly striking: the young Joy Division in the round passenger tunnel of the London subway – a snapshot that summed up post-punk early on.
Portraits in in-between moments
Corbijn is only marginally interested in glamor. His portraits often show people in in-between moments – often melancholic. This becomes particularly clear in his decades-long collaboration with U2 and Depeche Mode, whose visual identities he also decisively shaped on behalf of the record companies.
One of the strongest moments of the exhibition is the self-portrait series right at the entrance – which has already been shown in a different form in Tallinn. Corbijn poses as Ian Curtis in the 2002 work “a.somebody, strijen Holland” and stages himself as a Joy Division singer in the flat landscape of his native Netherlands. The image is not based on a specific photograph by Curtis, but functions as a personal memory, as an echo of collective musical images and as a reflection on transience.
From photo to film: a diverse work
The exhibition shows how diverse Corbijn’s work was. In addition to the photographs, his work ranges from over 80 music videos to documentaries and feature films. The best known, “Control,” traces the young Ian Curtis’s Manchester years in black and white.
“Corbijn, Anton” shows how much images shape our perception of artists – and you’re amazed at who he had in front of his lens. How a once-shy photographer helped shape the visual memory of several generations over decades.
The exhibition has been running since May 9th at Fotografiska in Berlin-Mitte and can be seen until September 20th, 2026.
